Oaklawn to give bonuses for winning without Lasix

[Merlinsky]

Originally Posted by pointman

Nice to see the industry continuing to chase a canard instead of focusing on real medication issues.

Oh good God, what is it to you if they want to do this? See they don't think they're chasing jack. They see it as rewarding something they believe is good. If you don't, fine. Going all Lasix or no Lasix right now seems to be inviting a pretty epic chasm in this sport so finding some sort of middle ground that you can take or leave isn't killing anybody. You consider this not as big a fish to fry as other things. Well others consider it a pretty big deal. You're not gonna talk'em off the ledge there plus let's just acknowledge that we as a sport don't have to tangle issues one at a time. You can deal with medication policy as well, but Oaklawn doing this doesn't have to involve multi-state jurisdictions and anti-trust considerations. It doesn't right now involve something they're foisting on the Breeders' Cup program. It's kinda easier for them to do this relatively small thing.

People can continue to use Lasix and unless the non-Lasix horse wins, things continue on as they always have. Given the various rules about going on or off Lasix out there, it's not like there's gonna be a huge rush. If you expect the anti-Lasix folks out there to 'put their money where their mouth is' that includes giving them opportunities to breed to horses with a record of running without Lasix. If incentives help with that, fine. If the horse needs Lasix to run comfortably, they'll get it and they'll get exactly as much money as they'd have expected to get from the purse previously.

Are you seriously suggesting that it's a bad idea to try to give horses that don't need Lasix to succeed an incentive that could then lead to highlighting them as a breeding option for those owners to then breed a horse less likely to bleed? At the very least, you'd be breeding a better horse, one with a greater heart-lung efficiency. Even if you still had concerns about bleeding and want to continue to use Lasix, that horse would be less likely to bleed through it right?